git · Git
The message
! [rejected] main -> main (fetch first)
What it means
The remote branch holds commits your clone has never seen, so pushing now would not be a fast-forward. It happens when a colleague pushed first, or when you last fetched a long time ago. git pull --rebase origin main brings those commits in and replays yours on top, and then the push goes through. Never reach for --force here: the commits you would overwrite are someone else's and are not in your repository at all, so nothing local can bring them back.
The fix
git pull --rebase origin main- Printed by
- git
- Git
- 29
Almost every git error is a refusal that means "doing that from this state would lose something"; fatal: means git stopped without changing anything, and the hint: lines under the first line usually carry the actual remedy.
Reading an error message
- Read from the first line down. The lower you go the more it is about the tool’s internals; the cause is usually at the top.
- If there is a file and a line number, start there — not the top stack frame, but the topmost line that names a file you wrote.
- Search the message verbatim, but strip your own paths and variable names first; those are what stop the search from matching.
- The same condition is worded differently across tool versions. If results look wrong, add the version number to the query.
- Before pasting a fix, check what it throws away. Some of these cannot be undone.
Common questions
Q. What does “! [rejected] main -> main (fetch first)” mean?
The remote branch holds commits your clone has never seen, so pushing now would not be a fast-forward. It happens when a colleague pushed first, or when you last fetched a long time ago. git pull --rebase origin main brings those commits in and replays yours on top, and then the push goes through. Never reach for --force here: the commits you would overwrite are someone else's and are not in your repository at all, so nothing local can bring them back.
Q. How do I fix it?
git pull --rebase origin main — before running it, check the explanation above for what this command discards.
Q. Which tool prints this?
git. It sits under Git, and the message runs to 7 words.